I've been on the Facebook group for a while, and I'm in the Mobile Frame 0: University server on Discord as well. (And currently participating in a Firebrands campaign run by Shades.)

I got into MFZ in high school, when a friend vaguely familiar with it at the time mentioned it in passing. I looked it up and, well, here we are. I've been trying to fluff out my own little corner of the Solar Calendar bit by bit, although I don't have much more than a name (The Chandaran Reach) and a couple "local" frame designs to the project at the moment.

I first played Rapid Attack against Mantisking at PAX East this year. (Yeah, it took me a while to actually get a game in ) Haven't played Intercept Orbit yet--working on that--and as I said above I'm currently in my first playthrough of Firebrands.

spacemonkey wrote:Welcome! Would love to hear your thoughts on Firebrands.

Well, it's a deceptively open system. Despite limiting the setting to one star system and three factions (on paper at least), there's a lot of room for expansion in fleshing out the locale as so much is left open for the players to decide/discover. I ended up, through a Solitaire session, defining the planet Bantral as being a jungle world partway through the process of being rendered inhabitable by terraforming. It could as easily have been a desert or whatever. And that's just the setting, let alone the characters! There's room to play just about anything and anyone within the scope of Solar Calendar canon (other than Ijad, and the rulebook has some guidelines for incorporating them and suggests at what their likely actions would be in the current scenario of Firebrands.)The thing I like the most about it, though, is that unlike some RPG's, there's no real way to "munchkin" through it. You really have to rely on the narrative to get things going, and just "winning" doesn't necessarily help you later. There are no clear-cut winners from a statistical standpoint--the most complex randomization in the game is the toss of a coin--and character background and behavior matters much more than any stats. For example, in one of the minigames, Meeting Sword to Sword, which I participated in, you don't determine who opens the duel by initiative rolls or such--instead, whichever of the two participants is better with a sword in-character would open the duel. (If they're about equally matched, a coin toss decides it.)The encounters/minigames in general aren't geared towards decisive, overwhelming one-way fights. Even if you're at a disadvantage in experience or ability, you can't get one-shotted or critfail your way to an ignoble death.Not to say that combat isn't exciting, or tense--because it sure as hell is both of those things! You have to think on your feet and weigh your timing of different questions carefully against how your opponent may respond, which, if you're not careful, could put you at a disadvantage or even get you killed. Because character death is very much a thing, even though I personally haven't run into it yet. What I'm trying to say here is that you have to put actual effort into killing each other, and doing so isn't always in your best interests.

Wow, that was pretty rambling on my part. In conclusion, it's amazing and you should totally try it out if you haven't yet.